Featuring Original Music by Carter Burwell With Songs by Emika, Amon Tobin, Tame Impala, and Yppah

(September 23, 2013– Los Angeles, CA) – Lakeshore Records will release THE FIFTH ESTATE – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on October 8th and on CD October 15, 2013. The soundtrack features original music by Carter Burwell (SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 & 2). The album also features songs by Amon Tobin, Yppah, Tame Impala, and Emika.

“Because so much of the film takes place in the world of hackers - in particular the Berlin hackers who were Daniel Berg's friends during his days with Wikileaks - the music leans toward electronica, which also suits the film as a political thriller,” Burwell described. “This musical vocabulary shifts toward the end of the film, as Daniel's friendship with Julian Assange frays, and the film becomes less a thriller and more a reflection on the nature of digital journalism and its responsibilities. By the end the electronics are left behind and a small string and wind ensemble carries the themes to their conclusion.”

Carter Burwell graduated from Harvard College. While at Harvard, he studied animation with Mary Beams and George Griffin, electronic music with Ivan Tcherepnin and pursued a course of independent study at the MIT Media Lab (then known as the Architecture Machine Group). In the early 80s, he worked at the New York Institute of Technology where he began as a computer modeler and animator, but ended up as Director of Digital Sound Research. During this time, he worked on many computer-animated television spots and films, ultimately contributing models and animation to the Japanese anime Lensman.

At the same time, Burwell pursued a parallel career in music, playing with a number of bands in New York City, particularly The Same, Thick Pigeon, and Radiante. He was also writing music for dance, theatre and film. His first film works included the Coen Brothers first feature, BLOOD SIMPLE.. This lead to a twenty year collaboration on such films as FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, O BROTHER WHERE ARE THOU? and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Burwell’s credits also include BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, VELVET GOLDMINE, THE SPANISH PRISONER, THREE KINGS, THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, TRUE GRIT, the HBO mini-series MILDRED PIERCE, and several films in the Twilight series including TWILIGHT, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 and PART 2.

Triggering our age of high-stakes secrecy, explosive news leaks and the trafficking of classified information, WikiLeaks forever changed the game. Now, in a dramatic thriller based on real events, THE FIFTH ESTATE reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century’s most fiercely debated organization. The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society—and what are the costs of exposing them?"

DreamWorks Pictures and Reliance Entertainment in association with Participant Media presents THE FIFTH ESTATE, in theaters on October 11, 2013. THE FIFTH ESTATE – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack will be available digitally on October 8th and on CD October 15, 2013.

So have any Burwell fans got around to this? I believe someone here spoke highly of this one to me, as well as Howl. Howl is a remarkable little bit of chamber writing by Burwell (who is one of my absolute favorites), but The Fifth Estate is something else entirely.

While much of this score resembles his swelling and stirring melodic writing that fans of his Coen Bros. scores like Fargo might be familiar with, there is also a heavy use of modern sound found here. I've only given the whole thing one listen, but it immediately stuck with me. So much so that I listened to "The Submission Platform" on repeat for about fifteen minutes last night. That one is easily a new favorite cue to me. It has so much energy and momentum for three minutes that it was like a mini miracle to my ears. I also really enjoyed the song selection here, from Amon Tobin to Tame Impala. The songs really complimented the score and it was fun seeing artists like the aforementioned get a spotlight on a film soundtrack; Tobin especially, as I love his video game scores like the Splinter Cell series and even his solo electronic work.